The efficient manipulation of captured image data is a significant consideration for designers, manufacturers, and users of electronic imaging devices. Contemporary imaging devices such as digital cameras effectively enable users to capture images, assemble or edit the captured images, exchange the captured images electronically, or print a hard copy of the captured images. users to capture images, assemble or edit the captured images, exchange the captured images electronically, or print a hard copy of the captured images.
As a camera user captures a number of digital images, it typically becomes necessary to sort and categorize the digital images. In some systems, a camera user must resort to the cumbersome and time-consuming task of individually viewing each captured image, identifying various groupings of image categories, and somehow manually tagging each image to specify the particular image category. For example, in Parulski, U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,678, a camera user manually selects a category for a group of images prior to the capture of the images. The camera user must select a new category for each new group of images. Such a manual categorization system is awkward to use and, therefore, does not provide as efficient an imaging device as a camera that features an automatic categorization system.
In other systems, software programs are available to permit the user to create thumbnails (smaller renditions of the captured image) and to place the thumbnails, with references to the original images, into various libraries or category systems. This process may also become very time consuming, especially as the number of captured images or the variety of category types increases.
From the preceding discussion, it becomes apparent that an electronic imaging system that manually analyzes and categorizes any significant number of captured images does not achieve an acceptable degree of efficiency. Therefore, an electronic imaging device that automatically analyzes captured images, and then responsively categorizes the analyzed images into one or more selected image groupings, would clearly provide a significant improvement in efficient functionality for various contemporary electronic imaging technologies.
For all the foregoing reasons, an improved system and method are needed for the automatic analysis and categorization of images in an electronic imaging device.